blazingbob

With three major shows there was a lot of space this year at the show. Fan Expo and Reed Philly definitely draws away customers and guests from doing the show. Overall I had a great buying and selling show so honestly I did not lose any customers to either of the shows. Have heard different reports on Reed Philly show but if the dates don't conflict with next years Wizard Show I would be doing it.

Normally if my customers buy CGC books from me they can trade up at the price the paid on their original purchase towards the newly negotiated price on the higher grade. If the book that they bought has gone up where that makes no sense they can use my consignment service to sell it and apply the proceeds toward the higher graded copy.

I'm also guessing that with the passing of John Verzyl CGC and the hobby lost a very valuable source of pedigree information and knowledge.

So I'm guessing that you didn't follow up with them to ask why they weren't noted as pedigree's? He may have not been the finalizer since I'm not exactly sure when you sent them in per your post. They would have never left CGC if I saw they were not noted properly.

You do know Matt is the head grader, right? Mark is a consultant for CGC

Mark Haspel when he worked there was generally very good at knowing the pedigree's as well as Matt. Normally a pedigree had to have a master list that CGC could match up against. As others have stated other pedigree's have distinguishing date stamps, name stamps, smell, etc.

Only if early CGC borock, Haspel not grading Pre-code and Overstreet before Borock revised it.

Excuse me "height challenged"

Tim McGraw is a comic dealer?

Did they send a private jet to fly you to the auctions to?

Not according to GPA fantatics

Again, my response would be that there are plenty of customers pressing books. Just because you "shouldn't" doesn't mean it isn't done. Whenever grading companies and money are involved there will be attempts at improving the item being submitted.

I hate auction houses, they take collections that used to go to dealers. I either learn to compete or move on to another business.

CGC is the same business model as grading coins and baseball cards. Nothing new. For the mentally challenged I will state that having a CGC graded book is like having a debit card. It is already graded, it can have a value that can be calculated since you've removed the grading debate and it essentially becomes a dollar/cents transaction.

Disagreeing with a business model is one thing, stating CGC sucks with no facts is another.

If I grade a book a 9.2 and it is pressed into a 9.8 I still graded it a 9.2. Pressing removes defects, I learn and if I make the decision to press I do it. Do you want to be right or out of business?

My response would be are you referring to PGX? Why would CGC do that?

1). Didn't trust CGC? I'd ask why. 2). There aren't a lot of shows where I would go and pull single digit spidey's from boxes. Unless he was referring to wall books. Technically the customer should be blaming "sellers" for not knowing how to grade or disclosing restoration on why single digit spidey's are now being graded all the time.

The reason that there are those that hate CGC is the fact that nobody has every been formally trained how to grade. There is NO grading college, no self appointed expert or group that teaches from written standards. You may quote the Overstreet grading guides but frankly after two attempts and lousy photography the standard "Grading is subjective" continues to be used almost 45 years since I started (1973). Whenever I get into grading arguments I ask who taught the person how to grade. It isn't meant as an insult, it is actually an insight on how they learned and what they learned. Each teacher has his/her own perk list of likes/dislikes. They determine that this defect means that the book will grade no higher then this versus what the standard may be. CGC has some very strict criteria on certain defects and is very lax on others. CGC is looser on Golden age then silver even though the books may exhibit the same defect. I also feel that every seller has his/her "comfort grade", they grade that grade very well, others they have a hard time with. Anybody with proprietary grading standards just wants to keep grading a mystery. Pricing a book and having you guess the grade is a way to avoid grading arguments. Purposely under grading is a way to avoid returns. It has nothing to do with you being a hard grader. If you don't have good light or squint when you are looking at books you might want to consider grading glasses. Put the ego aside and admit that your eyesight is no longer what it was. I've heard it said and frankly I agree, one of the harder grades to grade is a FN. Since no company has published standards we continue to fight over grades given. Grading contests, dealer grading lists, etc. As with any other business/hobby you should continue to learn as you go on. I've learned a few grading tips and share them when asked. It is amazing what happens to your grading ability when you are looking at books from a different perspective. If a LCS hates CGC it reinforces the fact that CGC does not always do a good job with the first time submitter/dealer. I have said to them before that not everyone walks up to a grading company and submits books. Sometimes you have to go to them and convince them that the books they have priced at this would sell for more when graded. Sometimes you have to be blunt and tell a seller that they are missing defects. At least you are taking a little time before and saving yourself a lot of disgruntled customers when they get books back they are a lot lower then they expect.

This logic works on unique super high grade examples of keys. The auction houses are sometimes very good at setting a new market because as some believe they are bidding in a "free market bidding environment" where the bidder assumes there are " multiple buyers". The auction houses are also very good at setting some good low numbers to. How did the Avengers #4 9.2 ($8100) do in the last auction? Showcase #4 7.0 ($37.200)? Set any new records on these where the seller left money on the table? Does the same logic apply to 9.2 copies, I doubt it. Put down the pom pom's.

Unfortunately GPA doesn't show scans of the book so ugly copies influence the market just as much as good copies can. Wouldn't that be useful to a subscriber if that were done? Imagine being able to look at the book yourself and make the determination if the price makes sense versus guessing. Probably would save a lot of "GPA versus asking price" arguments if the two parties involved were both comparing the copy for sale versus the copy that the data is reported on. The more data that both parties bring to the negotiating table the better. I'll even GIVE George the revenue incentive to doing this. Charge a premium ($1-$2) month) for this type of "additional" data. George, please make the check out to Highgradecomics.com for the idea.

I'll take the AS #17 9.0

For those who need to know Hi Bob: It doesn't add up to $200,000.00 yet because I haven't had time to put together the list of the runs of Actiion Comics, Superman Comics, the World's Finest Comics and the All Flash Comics! The original total came to $117,000 (the Timelys plus the lst appearance issues) plus another $27,000 for the slabbed books. The list of "slabbed" books primarily included books bought from the auction houses (some of them were not slabbed, but that is not what I'm talking about. For example, there were several unslabbed World's finest books listed, but that is just a fraction of the World's Finest Comics which include World's Fair 1940, WF No 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 and so forth all the way up to issue 110. (Also I didn't keep all the books in one place so I have to be careful not to include books that weren't stolen). But the current total is $147,000 plus the Golden Age unslabbed books that I am putting together. So when I put together the update of the Superman, Action and World's Finest comics, All Flash and miscellaneous comics , the total will be well over $200K. The problem is that most of the books in storage were never slabbed but they were extensive runs which were purchased over the last 30 years. Some of the Supermans were bought during the Sotheby/s/Christies era! That's how long I've owned some of these books.

Honestly guys, I am doing the best I can with what I'm being sent. Joe hasn't finalized the list, he sends what he can and I'm posting it.

Updated list has been added to the Original post